How to make your kid really cool 101

Jeff Vrabel

Monday

Jun 25, 2007 at 12:01 AMJun 25, 2007 at 5:08 PM

Columnist Jeff Vrabel realizes that doesn't actually work.

Once you've logged a few good solid years as a parent, you begin to notice fairly magnificent disconnects between your practical parenting skills and the grand plans you concocted back when your child was still safely tucked in utero and you had no idea what you were talking about.

Before my 3-year-old was born, for instance, we made a vow to feed him only organic, foods, pesticide-free and grown by the Amish if possible (these days, each morning finds him shoveling down some combination of instant bacon, Pop-Tarts and a gelatinous candy he's taken to referring to as “gummi things”). And as an aspiring music snob, at that time I also, personally proclaimed, with grand flourishes and trumpets when appropriate, that he'd be exposed only to a smartly considered cross-section of music that, I hardly need point out, had the bonus effect of making me seem really cool for having drawn it up.

I bring this up because of the recent movement of hip-parent books, articles, Web sites and blogs: more than memoirs and books Mitch Albom writes, the literature world has been bedazzled by a lively flurry of memoirs by Gen X-type parents documenting their experiences of having and raising children, as though only a lucky few specimens in the whole of human experience has ever formed a band and then, at some point in the following years, procreated.

Many of them are good reads, but they all seem powered by the driving force of the Gen X music writer-type: the Gen X music writer type. Aging Gen X parents are to publishing houses what newly clear-cut lakefront property is to real estaters: sweet, delicious money. I don't mean that unsympathetically; for a generation weaned on instant accessibility, it's justifiably sticky to get past the mindset of me me me me me, even when you have a nap-less hobbit toddling about shouting the same thing while liberally applying spoonfuls of creamed things to your furniture.

But it would seem that the production of babies is having less of an evident effect than you might expect, creating an oft-uncomfortable sense of toddler-as-accessory: look at the Social Distortion T I found for Jake! Look at the Beatles' "Rockabye Baby" record I play him at night! Read Daddy's blog for updates on the regularity and volume of his post-organic yogurt poop production!

I don't mean to sound harsh. These examples are all goofy and endearingly silly; parents can be forgiven for making the most of the ability to decide that their son will listen exclusively to Miles Davis for his first 18 months, instead of having to decide if their son will get the transplant or not.

Or it could be that such outlets represent a generation still partly stuck in neutral, unable to surrender, even temporarily, the dozen or so years spent building up valuable hipster points it could to in the pursuit of raising a child. People don't blog because they find themselves laden with too much free time; they blog because they want to be noticed, appreciated and evaluated fondly, and publicly. And I worry that people don't necessarily endeavor to make their kids cool because they want to make their kids cool; they do so to feel that their own coolness is being hermetically sealed in forever, which is HILARIOUS. Because, seriously, have you ever met my dad? Or yours? Four words: Barry Manilow live albums, with a heavy, sad emphasis on the plural.

It might be worth sucking it up on the Captain Feathersword thing for a few years, because it won't be that long before your mucus-y blank slate decides it doesn't want you around anymore. At a certain age, Ted Leo will, before your very eyes, up and morph directly into Gordon Lightfoot, not because Ted Leo isn't any good, but because Ted Leo is liked by you, and to a 12-year-old, you will suck, no matter how many hours you dedicated to polishing up your playlist. Frankly, anything else would be weird; if a generation of kids suddenly failed to find their elders' music hopelessly lame, it'd pretty much spell the end of civilization as we know it, and with good cause.

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